The world's longest-running musical is back. And The Fantasticks is a show that all but the most hardened soul will love.
The story is schmaltzy -- the ageless one about boy and girl fall in love, boy and girl fall out of love, boy and girl fall back in love. Yet, for over four decades Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt's musical, by far their best known, has entralled millions in over 12,000 productions worldwide. Not bad for a show that was considered quite avant garde for its time.
It is also probably the world's most-honored musical, with awards upon awards including the Obie and, in rare recognition of an Off Broadway show, a 1992 Special Tony Award.
Jones and Schmidt were honored with ASCAP's 1993 Richard Rodgers Award. They were inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 1999. The composers have stars in the Lortel Theatre Off-Broadway Walk of Fame.
Off Broadway, "the little musical that endured," as it came to be called, racked up a record-shattering 17,162 performances when it closed Off Broadway in January 2002.
Ironically, considering the legend that's grown up around the show, it almost didn't happen. But more on that later.
The news is that it's back, opening tomorrow, in the Uptown Theater District: the third-floor, 199-seat theater in the Snapple complex (at Broadway and 50th Street), which still has some technical kinks to work out. An attractive lobby space is not one of them, for on its walls is much of the priceless media memorabilia S&J have collected through the years.
Jones (book and lyrics) is directing. Fantasticks veteran Janet Watson (recently in Broadway's Big River, Pacific Overtures) has done the musical staging. Several of the songs -- "Soon It's Gonna Rain," "They Were You," "I Can See It" and especially "Try To Remember" -- have become theater and pop standards now known to generations. They still have the magical ability to soar.
Except for a bit of political correctness, not much attempt has been made to change the show, often thin as air but with dark clouds brewing. It's pretty much intact as it was running Off Broadway for 42 years. Of course, the cast is different and is particularly good, highlighted by three stage vets: Burke Moses (Beauty and the Beast, Kiss Me, Kate, Guys and Dolls, NYC Opera's Most Happy Fella), who possesses one of theater's great voices, as El Gallo; Martin Vidnovic as Papa Bellomy and Leo Burmester (Les Miz, Big River, Thou Shalt Not) is Papa Hucklebee. Vidnovic, a Tony nominee for the Brigadoon revival and a Drama Desk winner for Baby, is intimately acquainted with the show, since he's a former El Gallo. And if you haven't had the pleasure of seeing Moses onstage, running the gamut from comedy and drama to parody, think of him as an almost-twin of Danny Burstein.
Although he only occasionally gives a hint here that he could mop up the stage as a future Aldolpho in The Drowsy Chaperone, there's probably no other actor who could come close to Burstein's exhilaratingly pompous and hilarious performance. Also starring in The Fantasticks are Santino Fontana as Matt, Sara Jean Ford as Luisa, Robert R. Oliver as Mortimer and Douglas Ullman, Jr. as the Mute. Returning to the musical for the first time since it originally opened in 1960 is "Thomas Bruce," as Henry, the old actor.
There's certainly comedy in the show, but Oliver and Bruce, thankfully, imbibe their scenes with shameless scenestealing -- literally walking off it (even giving Moses a run for his money, which is pretty difficult to do).
It's not the best-kept secret that Thomas Bruce is Jones. What's it like returning to a role after nearly a half a century? "In one way, it feels totally strange to be recreating Henry," replies Jones. "Forty-six years is a long hiatus! In another, it feels totally natural."
Part of those "strange/natural" feelings may have to do with the fact that at the midtown Snapple Theater, the producers have duplicated the atmosphere and set of the original production in Greenwich Village, where the musical ran for 42 years.
Jones explains, "I put on the same old age make-up, even though I'm old enough not to need it! I crawl into my space for my surprise entrance, and it's not quite as easy as it once was. But when I step out into the lights and the audience laughs, I feel that I've come home. Actually, that I never left it."
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Flashback to August, 1959: Jones, Schmidt and friend Word Baker met as students at the University of Texas, where J&S had been at work on a "unique new entertainment" for a decade. A professor introduced Jones to Edmond Rostand's 1890 play, Les Romaneques, a story of two fathers -- next door neighbors -- who concoct a feud to fool their romance-obsessed son and daughter into falling in love.
"It had a profound effect on me," he says, "but I didn't think of it as a source of a musical. In fact, I'd never seen a musical, except in the movies. We did hundreds of plays in college, but not one musical. It was later, in graduate school, when I met Harvey and Word, that I began to discover musical theater."
On their move to New York, while writing special material for revues, the duo decided to write a "fun musical."
"I don't remember who suggested the Rostand piece," says Jones, "but we all agreed. Then Harvey and I got drafted."
When they returned to civilian life, the duo continued working on their show, which championed such new ideas as an open stage. After another three years, they were about to throw in the towel when Baker suggested trying it out in summer stock.
The Fantasticks, as they titled it, a one-act blithe spirit of a musical about love in all its gorgeous simplicity and heartbreaking complexities, would be on a triple bill in New York in Barnard College's summer festival.
What about the title? "The fathers refer to Luisa and Matt as being 'fantastic,'" Jones notes. Adds Schmidt. "Tom added the 'k' to make the show sound more mysterious."
The mini-musical, in this early inception written completely in verse, was the definition of putting on a show on a shoestring budget. The "orchestra" was Schmidt playing piano. In a stroke of later genius, he added a harpist to accompany the songs. An accomplished illustrator, he designed and executed the costumes in bare-bones fashion. Still they had color and sparkle.
It was Jones' job to get producers uptown to see the show. Rehearsals ran smoothly until the dress. Susan Watson, playing Luisa, was recovering from a fall from the ladder that was the show's only "scenery" and strained her vocal chords. She could hardly manage a whisper.
The choreographer stepped into Watson's dances, and Schmidt sang her songs. It was some performance. "We didn't know what else could go wrong," exclaims Jones.
But, in one of those wonderful but rare show business stories, afterwards Lore Noto, a fledgling producer, said he thought The Fantasticks would be perfect for the booming world of offbeat Off-Broadway.
"Like all producers," says Schmidt, "he had some suggestions. They were minor. One was that the show be expanded to two acts." The duo couldn't help but love Noto when he told them his other condition, "that he'd produce the show only if we had total creative control."
J&S were so poor, they held auditions in the Upper West Side apartment they shared. "We couldn't afford a casting director," remembers Jones. "Hopefuls were lined up out the door and down four flights of stairs. I don't remember how Jerry [Orbach] heard about the show, but he came and sang and read right in the living room. He was sensational."
Then and there, the composers and Baker decided he'd be the perfect El Gallo, and they went to tell him; but Orbach, late for another audition, had left to grab the subway. Relates Schmidt, "We ran down the stairs past the other waiting actors and caught him at the corner."
As fate would have it, Orbach scored at the next audition and was offered a role in a new Broadway show. "At five times the salary Lore could pay!" recalls Schmidt. But, psychic that he may have been, Orbach chose The Fantasticks. It ended up being a smart move. The other musical closed out of town. As a result of his fantastic reviews, he was soon Broadway-bound in the lead in David Merrick's production of Gower Champion's Carnival.
Other members of the original cast were: Bruce as Henry, George Curley as Mortimer, Rita Gardner (currently in The Wedding Singer) as Luisa, William Larsen as Hucklebee (the girl's father), Kenneth Nelson (later of Boys in the Band fame) as Matt, Richard Stauffer as the Mute and Hugh Thomas as Bellomy. Jay Hampton had the role of the Handyman, which was eventually dispensed with.
Though cast and with a theater, the 150-seat Sullivan Street Playhouse, and though The Fantasticks opened (May 3, 1960) "it was a miracle we didn't close," Schmidt states. "Of the handful of people involved in the original production, no two remember it quite the same," says Jones. "That goes for Harvey and I, and we were there and have been answering questions about it for over forty-seven years." From inception, the duo thought their creation would be the perfect show for what was shaping up to be a unique decade. Maybe they were a bit ahead of their time.
"Our opening was punctuated not only by the snores of sleeping audience members," Jones vividly remembers, "but also by such comments as 'I don't understand it!' and 'What the hell was that?' And then came the reviews!"
"They weren't money notices," laughs Schmidt.
Jones says they weren't that bad, but for the most part, they were. Especially the all-important Times review by the much-respected Brooks Atkinson, who was known to love innovative theater. He wrote: "Two acts are one too many to sustain the delightful tone of the first...[It's] the sort of thing that loses magic the longer it endures."
Even critics puzzled by the musical praised the cast and Baker's unique staging in the Sullivan Street's U-shaped arc. Still, The Fantasticks appeared doomed.
"In retrospect," claims Jones, "it's amazing that we had a second night, much less that we were able to run that first week with anyone in the audience."
Gardner remembers the rocky days after the opening. "The critics thought the show was sweet, but we didn't get the reviews."
Even at then-Off Broadway prices of $2.95, $3.95 and $4.95, Gardner says, "audiences were sparse. Sometimes we played to ten and twenty people. It got so bad that Lore suspended performances and took the show to East Hampton. We generated enough word of mouth there to assure some kind of life back on Sullivan Street."
Thanks to excellent outer critics' reviews and the gradual exposure the songs received on TV from such huge pop stars as Harry Belafonte, Ed Ames and Barbra Streisand, The Fantasticks went on to have quite a life. By its third year, it was an established hit and remained so for years.
In 1986, it almost closed when producer Noto became ill. "When the closing notice was placed in the Times," reports Schmidt, "there were protests and calls and letters poured in from around the world. We were saved when Lore's friend Don Thompson stepped in to take over until he recovered." Within a week, performances were sold out.
Noto's 44 original investors received a 35% return on their $16,500 total investment.
In addition to setting a world record in New York, The Fantasticks gave performances at the White House. The show has been seen by nine presidents. It also established record runs in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Denver.
Of course, the question is being asked, "Why bring the show back now?" Jones responds,"I don't know why it seems strange to have it back. The Fantasticks is a classic coming-of-age story. Really, it seems strange that it should ever have gone away. There are now hundreds of thousands who've never seen the show."
Muses Schmidt, "The story is universal. It radiates a timeless sweetness and sunniness."
Jones points to other happenings: "Look at the changes and social upheaval we've been through since 2002. There's a certain comfort level in having our modest little show performing its ritual parable over and over today in the simplicity of its bare-bones staging." He adds, laughing, "The original production made it through ten presidents. I'd like to see it get through at least one more!"
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